


There's an old voice in my head

by paranomastic



Category: RWBY
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-13
Updated: 2015-08-13
Packaged: 2018-04-14 12:13:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4564272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paranomastic/pseuds/paranomastic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yang is incapacitated at an inopportune moment, and Blake has to step in and help Ruby through some stuff.</p><p>A small thing I was convinced to post by a couple friends. They know who they are.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There's an old voice in my head

Blake assumes Ruby’s silence the trip back to Beacon from the field is a response to Yang’s unconsciousness. She cannot say she does not feel like being much the same, between having to sit across the stretcher from her girlfriend whose sister is currently receiving medical attention and said unconscious sister being her best friend. She also assumes that Ruby not being in the room when they go to sleep that might means she convinced someone to let her stay in the medical ward with her sister. Special blood relation privileges and all that.

She starts to get worried when Ruby misses class the next day. And lunch. And the class after that. Okay, Blake figures, Ruby probably just got permission to spend the day by Yang’s bedside. They predicted a speedy recovery, so she probably wanted to be there when Yang woke up.

When Yang’s cot is unattended after class, Blake officially becomes Fully Worried.

Every second she spends looking for Ruby hurts, after she leaves Weiss to go find her. The room is empty, Jaune says Ruby “hasn’t been around all day,” Oobleck says she absolutely did not get permission to skip class.

And when she does eventually find Ruby, Blake almost wishes she had not. She looks more like a veiled coming attraction than anything, knees tucked to her chest underneath her cloak and hood tucked tightly over her head in a desolate corner of the library.

“Ruby?”

The bundle inside the cloak turns away, sniffing slightly, but says nothing.

Blake runs over, just barely remembering to keep quiet as befits the building they are in, “Where have you _been_ , we’ve all been so-“

A glimpse under the hood of the cloak tells her all she needs to know. Tears have struck bright lines down Ruby’s face, and her hands clutch an old photograph of a woman who looks a lot like her.

_”We have to make sure we finish this mission quick, okay?” Yang had insisted, “It’s important. Ruby and I have some stuff to do.”_

_Days before: “Look, can’t you just postpone the mission until after the twenty-first-“_

Oh.

Blake sits next to Ruby, her throat tight, “Birthday?”

The hood bobs up and down a couple times.

“And Yang’s…” Blake pulls her own knees up, “Do you want to talk about it?”

The silence is, Blake supposes, its own answer.

The physical comfort thing has never exactly been Blake’s forte, but if anyone counts as a reason for her to try, it’s Ruby. She reaches an arm around Ruby’s shoulders and pulls the smaller girl in. The gesture is not met with much protest, but also no attempts on Ruby’s part to keep herself steady. “Well, you know me. I’m good at not talking.”

Ruby sniffs again, hands gripping the photograph tighter, and a whole minute passes before a barely-there whisper breaks the silence from below the cloak. “She would have liked you.”

“Mm?” Blake feels bad for prying, but at the same time any progress back towards normal Ruby is worth pressing forward on.

“She liked books a lot. Especially fairy tales.” It sounds now almost like Ruby might be smiling under the hood, “Almost all I remember about her anymore is how she used to read to me.” One hand leaves the photograph to wipe away a tear, “Just her voice. And how safe it made me feel. It was… kinda quiet, like yours. And really nice. I never heard her get angry.” She pulls in on herself again, “At least not from what I remember. But every year when her birthday comes I remember her less and less. Her voice sounds more like Yang’s voice, her face gets blurrier and blurrier…” She looks up at Blake, eyes shining, “I just really don’t want to forget her.”

Blake freezes. _This is a Yang thing. This is not a girlfriend-of-a-few-months thing._ But Yang is not here, and Blake is. And when it comes to loss, Blake has to admit she knows a thing or two. “Then tell me about her. As much as you remember.”

“You sure? You really don’t have to-“

“Ruby, if it’s important to you, it’s important to me.” She presses her lips to Ruby’s forehead, “Just think of her like a story. There’s no better way to remember a story than to tell it.”

\-----------------------------------------

An hour later in the infirmary, Yang Xiao Long crashes back to consciousness in a cold sweat. “Ruby!”

“Welcome back, Weiss, wow, I’m glad you decided to stick around by my bedside while the other two team members went off skipping class and ditching you to find the other one!” Weiss had, in fact, been sitting next to Yang’s cot since class ended.

“ _Where’s Ruby?_ ” Yang is sitting up now, eyes darting around the room.

Weiss sighs, “Wherever Blake found her, probably.” A pause, “Something’s way more wrong than we thought, isn’t it?”

“Yep.” Yang replies, swinging out of bed, “We’re finding her right now, come on.”

Yang and Weiss reach the corner of the library faster than Blake had found it – Yang, naturally, had a feeling Ruby would probably get close to as many books as possible today. But rather than finding Ruby in the state she feared her sister might be in, Ruby had tucked tight against Blake’s side, the two together holding a book of fairy tales pilfered from somewhere else in the shelves.

“Yang!” Ruby yells, a little too loud for the library, standing and running to hug her.

Yang winces slightly, slipping an arm around her, “Hey, sis.”

Ruby looks up at her, “… you weren’t supposed to leave the bed, were you?”

“No one told me not to.”

“No one got the chance…” Weiss mutters.

Ruby takes a glance down at Yang’s stomach, where blood is currently leaking into her bandages, “Thanks, Yang, but uh. Let’s head back there, okay?” She turns towards Blake, who is currently strongly considering leaving, “All of us.”

By the end of the day, Team RWBY had together, taking turns passing the book across the infirmary bed to read aloud, made their way through almost all of the stories inside. And all of their voices sounded a little like Summer’s, but entirely like their own.

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from Little Talks by Of Monsters and Men, just so we are all clear. I assume we are clear, yes? Yes.


End file.
